Biography of
Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut was an extremely popular American writer of humor and science-fiction novels and short stories. Vonnegut has particularly remained an important mentor for young pacifists, although his work has inspired a rather rabid cult following amongst others.

His novels are known for their dark humor and playful use of science fiction, as well as for their serious moral vision and cutting social commentary. Although his work has sometimes been criticized for being too simplistic, there are many who consider his imagination and sense of humor to be singular and peerless. He is at once irreverent and highly moral, and this rare combination has made his voice integral to American literature.

Ironically, Vonnegut, one of the 20th century's great American pacifists, was born on Armistice Day. Born in Indianapolis on November 11, 1922, Kurt Vonnegut entered a well-to-do family that was hit very hard by the Depression. Vonnegut went to public high school, unlike his two older siblings, and there gained early writing experience while working for the high school's daily paper.

He later enrolled at Cornell University in 1940 and, under pressure from his father and older brother, studied chemistry and biology. He had little real love for the subjects, and his performance was poor. He did, however, enjoy working for the Cornell Daily Sun.

In 1942, Vonnegut left Cornell, right as the university was preparing to ask him to leave due to poor academic performance. He enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon) in 1943. He studied there only briefly before enlisting in the U.S. Army. Sadly, during this time, his mother killed herself by overdosing on sleeping pills in May 1944. (In 1984, Vonnegut himself would attempt suicide by pills and alcohol.)

On December 14, 1944, Vonnegut was captured in the Battle of the Bulge. He was held as a POW in Dresden, a beautiful German city with no major industries or military presence. He was there when the Allies bombed Dresden, an entirely unexpected attack. Vonnegut and the other POWs were some of the only survivors. They waited out the bombing in a meat cellar deep under the slaughterhouse. This experience would not only shape his worldview, but would provide the direct inspiration for his most famous novel, Slaughterhouse Five.

Vonnegut was repatriated in May 1945, and upon his return married Jane Marie Cox. He studied anthropology at the University of Chicago, but the department unanimously rejected his M.A. thesis. (According to the university's rules, a high-quality piece of writing could be substituted for a dissertation. Twenty years later, Vonnegut showed the department Cat's Cradle, and he was awarded his degree in 1971.) Vonnegut worked various jobs during his time at the University of Chicago and throughout the 1950s.

Vonnegut's first short story, "Report on the Barnhouse Effect," was published in 1950. Vonnegut has expressed some dissatisfaction with his short stories, saying that he mostly wrote them for money while working on his novels, which are more important to him. But some of his stories are accomplished works in their own right, and many readers gain their first exposure to Vonnegut through these stories, which combine in condensed form Vonnegut's trademark humor, fantasy, and social commentary. Dozens of Vonnegut's short stories, and two of his novels, appeared in the 1950s.

When his sister and her husband both died in 1958, Vonnegut adopted their three eldest children. He and his first wife had three children of their own, and they later adopted a seventh. Jane Marie Cox and Vonnegut separated in 1970, and in 1979, he married photographer Jill Krementz.

Due to his reputation as a science fiction writer, Vonnegut's first novels were published only as paperbacks with gaudy covers which misrepresented the novels and discouraged serious critical attention. The hardcover editions of Cat's Cradle (1963) and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965) were a significant improvement, although they sold only a few thousand copies. In 1966-1967, all of Vonnegut's novels were reissued in paperback, and he began to develop a significant underground following.

During the 1960s, Vonnegut published a collection of short stories and four more novels, including his sixth and greatest novel, Slaughterhouse Five. The novel's popularity and broad critical acclaim focused new attention on Vonnegut's earlier work, and soon, The Sirens of Titan sold over 200,000 copies.

He continued to write prolifically until his death, publishing his final novel, Timequake, in 1997. With its publication, he retired from fiction writing. His final publication is his lifetime was a book of essays entitled A Man without a Country (2005). He worked as a senior editor at In These Times, a progressive Chicago magazine, until his death.

Kurt Vonnegut passed away in 2007.

Study Guides on Works by Kurt Vonnegut

Published in 1973, Breakfast of Champions or Goodbye, Blue Monday! was Kurt Vonnegut's 50th birthday present to himself. It also marked the end of a period of depression that had followed his 1969 publication of Slaughterhouse Five.

Cat's Cradle, like many of Vonnegut's other novels, gets considerable mileage from irony and humor as it makes serious points about the state of the world and humanity. His tone is often light, but his words have a considerable bite. The...

Published in 1969, Slaughterhouse Five is a novel written in troubled times about troubled times. As the novel was being finished in 1968, America saw the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. In the South, Blacks and their...